


The Long View and the Short

by AstroGirl



Category: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion... - Sandia Labs
Genre: Future, Gen, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 13:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8803036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: Times change, except for all the ways in which they don't.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coreomajoris (dlemur)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dlemur/gifts).



> I'm afraid this story went in a bit of a different direction than I originally intended it to. Mainly, I didn't expect it to be quite this much of a downer. I blame the fact that I started writing it a week after the US election. I hope it is welcome, anyway, dear Yuletide recipient!

CINDY, IN A MOMENT WE'LL CALL "NOW"

She's supposed to be filling out reports, but Cindylenna Nto-Ev can't resist bringing up the aerial view one more time. The quality is poor and flickery, thanks to the ancient gel-screen display Headquarters consistently refuses to replace, but the zig-zag shapes of the earthworks stand out, unmistakable and strange. Stevestel is right, there's no way that's natural terrain. Someone _made_ the land do this. Some long-ago human beings created those shapes. Why? And who? And, for that matter, how?

Cindy trails a finger across the screen and lets herself wonder. Perhaps they were ancestors of hers? The DNA analysis she received as a gift on her Adulthood Day suggested she might have some from this area, traces of genes from the Northerican Drylands' original peoples and their Old Spainish conquerors still discernible beneath the more recent African ancestry and the usual contributions of the Pacific Diaspora.

What must these possible ancestors of hers have been thinking as they tattooed this earthwork design onto the surface the world? Was it a great religious enterprise? Some vast, inscrutable work of art? Did they imagine it being found, all these centuries later, and wondered over, or did they regard it as theirs alone?

 

NOW MINUS 20 GENERATIONS

Quitting time, the end of a long desert afternoon. Manuel Begay shuts down the heavy earth-mover and sits for a moment, listening to its dying rumbles echo from the half-constructed mound in front of him. Wiping the few beads of sweat that haven't yet evaporated from his forehead, he swings himself down from the machine and stands, surveying the landscape around him. It's hard to say why, exactly, but even unfinished, he already finds this place unsettling. Although he supposes that's the point: a creepy, broken landscape to represent a creepy, poisoned land. His Navajo grandfather probably would have found some symbolism in that, but Miguel is far too tired from spending all day creating the thing to think too hard on its meaning. But that's all right, he supposes. If the geniuses behind this are right, there'll be ten thousand years to figure it out.

 

NOW

Cindy flicks her fingers, applying a carefully-calibrated amount of pressure to the finicky old gel-screen, and the remote sensing map fades in over the aerial view. Gently, she touches the spot that her superiors, in their typically imaginative fashion, have labeled Subterranean Anomaly Number One. The hollow place. The big one. The place the drill-team are preparing even now to breach.

She feels a surge of pride at her own small part in creating this map, and a thrill of excitement and curiosity at the thought of what they might find. The old Globals, the civilization that spanned so much of the world before the Melting and all the chaos that came with it, they made so much strange, fascinating, marvelous _stuff_. Plastics of every imaginable description. Vehicles that ran on petroleum. Imagine! You might as well power your craft with diamonds. And computers, of course, would hardly be what they are today, if it weren't for the remnants of technology and knowledge that came through those times, ready to be reclaimed and re-created once the world settled down again. Even now, archeo-resource teams still regularly pull tiny, ancient miracles from the old world's garbage dumps and the ruins of its homes. So whatever lies buried in a strange and special place like this, it surely must be worth seeing. She hopes she'll be able to at least catch a glimpse, when they finally bring it up. It gives her a strangely reverent feeling, the thought of being present as history is unearthed, after lying secret and undisturbed for all that time.

Though she wishes, sometimes, that she'd been present when that history was _made_ , instead. It must have been like living in a world of magic and wonder, then. Of course, the times that followed were awful, but even those at least were _interesting_. There's something to be said, she thinks, for the opportunity to test yourself in a challenge for survival, to watch the world changing around you. It's something she's keenly aware is missing in her own life, in the endless-day-to-day tedium of sitting at a glitchy computer filling out reports and waiting for other people to make discoveries.

She sighs, and flicks the maps off the screen.

 

NOW MINUS 16 GENERATIONS

They can't stay here. 

The rest of the world was getting wetter, last they heard, but here it's only gotten drier. There's no water in the Pecos now, and what remains in the lakes is inaccessible for the likes of Lupita and her family, claimed long ago by people with lots of guns and very little generosity. Soon what remains in the aquifers will be gone completely, but by then, with no water for the cattle or the game animals, no water for what few crops the land could have supported to begin with... Well, it won't really matter. They'll starve, perhaps, before they die of thirst.

They have to leave. The New Texas Republic might not be better, but they say if you keep a low profile and make yourself useful, the Texans might see fit to let you stay. They say that if you can reach the Gulf Coast – closer, now, than it used to be – you can make a living gutting fish. They say that East Texas still has electricity, even that they've set up plants to turn seawater fresh, but Lupita doesn't quite believe that.

She gathers her family, anyway, with all the water they can carry, and sets out to the east. There are bandits on the roads, so they travel across the roadless desert in the cool, concealing hours of the night. Old Juan navigates them by the stars. He studied astronomy, a long time ago, at the tech school in Socorro, before the town fell to ruin. (Ghost towns, they called those once. Now, they just call them towns.)

All the water they can carry isn't enough. Juan is the first to go, falling exhausted into the sand and scrub, his breaths coming raspily through his dry throat, until, suddenly, they don't. 

After that, it's harder to find their way. It's harder to believe that there was ever a way to find.

By the time Lupita collapses against the massive mound of earth, she is alone. She doesn't wonder what this strange place she has come to is. She only wonders if there might be water, somewhere.

 

NOW

Cindy's display reverts to its default image, a picture of her family taken shortly before she accepted this job. Her wives smile up at her, their expressions loving and proud. To either side of them, the boys stand, smiling and beautiful in their formal skirts. And, between them, the baby, their tiny eyes wide and wondering.

Cindy sighs again. She needs to remember why she's here. They're all counting on her, on the money she's bringing in from this job. She needs to get her head out of the past, to concentrate on the here-and-now, on the things that will put new clothes on her family's bodies, better food on their table. Nothing in the past or future should matter as much as that.

She's only just opened up her report again when Steve's message comes in.

She reads the note attached to the image first: "Found this marker with all this weird writing on it. We didn't have time to stop and look at it much, but I know you're into all this old crap, so I thought you might be interested. Does the one in the middle look like old Global Chinese to you?"

She looks. It does. She closes the report-writer and goes hunting for a historical translation program instead.

Two hours later, she stands before her boss, watching her read the results.

"Shit," says Lindanna. "Toxic waste? Radiation? Like what happened to that expedition in the north?"

"Yes," says Cindy. "You have to tell them to stop."

Linda sighs. "Shit," she says again. "So much for the ridiculous profits we were going to make on this expedition. Looks like we're gonna be talking a loss." She makes a growling, unhappy noise. Her superiors won't be pleased, either.

"I thought..." says Cindy. She realizes her hands are clutching at each other, a symptom of her restless disappointment, and forces them to stop. "I thought we might make a discovery. Something beautiful."

Linda snorts. "You and your obsession with the past. Look at this!" She gestures to her display, to the words "radioactive waste" glowing stark against the screen. "The past's not worth venerating, Cindy. They weren't better people than us. They just made some better gadgets, that's all."

"Yeah," says Cindy. "You're probably right. The world's a better place now. We've learned from their mistakes, right?"

Linda nods, then lets out a tired little sigh. "All right. If that's it, I'll call them up, tell them to get ready to pull out."

"There is one other thing," Cindy says. "See here?" She indicates a line of text on the screen. "It asks whoever finds the marker to add a copy of the warning in their own language. We should probably--"

"Oh, come on," Linda says, cutting her off. "Like we have time for that! We're losing money every moment we stay here. Anyway, it'll go on file at Records. Everyone will know to avoid this place from now on."

"But..." Cindy doesn't want to say it, but keeps going, anyway. "But what if...?"

"What? You mean, what if we collapse like the Globals, and we forget everything, too? Yeah, that's not gonna happen. You said it yourself, it's a better world now, isn't it? More advanced, more enlightened. We've learned better, right?"

Cindy hesitates, but only for a moment. "Right," she says. "Of course."

"OK, then. Get back to work, will you? We've wasted enough time already." 

 

NOW PLUS 27 GENERATIONS

He can't stay here.

The War Plague has reached the cities. The Gene-purists and the Ascensionists continue to fight each other, in the air and in the streets, even as the pestilence neither side will admit to unleashing consumes them both.

Jenla Nto-Esten takes as much food and water as he can find and heads out across the grasslands that once were desert. He's heard rumors of refugees in the Caverns, a group that will welcome anyone who renounces violence and tests germ-free. He doesn't know if it's true, but he has to hold on to hope. 

He's been walking for four days when, in the shadow of the jagged earthworks, he begins to cough. So. Not germ-free, after all.

By the time he reaches the half-buried marker, his coughs are constant, dry and rattling, and his tongue is swollen almost too big to fit his desiccated mouth. He can't read what the writing on the marker says. For a moment, he thinks that's the fever, eating at his brain, until he realizes it's in languages he's never seen. The meaning of the faces, one terrified, one sick, is clear enough to him, though. This is a place to die.

He sits, back to the marker, and does not rise again. Centuries later, the returning desert covers up his bones.

 

NOW

Cindy touches the faces of her children, flickering dimly on the display, then opens up her profit reports and gets to work. After all, the past is dead and gone. But she has a future to provide for.

 

NOW PLUS 75 GENERATIONS

Zeteta Esten-Glav Delenso stands among the eroded earthworks and looks down at her hand-held detector, a piece of technology that has been invented, and lost, and re-invented many times between the Melting and the Plague, between the Plague and the Martian Wars, between the Wars and now. The signal she's seeing, buried far below her, is exciting. This treasure-hunting expedition just might pay off after all!

Smiling, she signals to her team to begin to drill.


End file.
